23 comments:

Dinner with Andre reminded me of this Waking Life (2001) existentialism clip.

The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us... I'm afraid were losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it were a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never felt once minute of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, its like your life is yours to create. Ive read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as being fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when sartre talks about responsibilty, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not taling about the kind of self or souls that theologians would talk about. Hes talking about you and me talking, making descisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we shouuld never write ourselves off or see eachother as a victim of various forces. It's always our descision who we are.

I was raised in foster homes. Was I in control of that or was I "a victim of various forces"? I'm all for taking responsibility and all but I'm also aware that what people do greatly influences others lives. I've seen people killed before my eyes, struck lame, and driven mad - all the while, others are spouting this malarky like it's deep, when, mostly, what it does is let them off the hook for not doing anything against wrong when they had the chance.

As my best friend and I said to his son the other night: We are only going to set boundaries - you've got to learn to make good choices on your own.

Why are we still talking about these nonentity people? Don't you know that Billy Mays, the burly, bearded television pitchman whose boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean made him a pop-culture icon, has died?

Over the years, you have recommended a few movies that I got from netflix and really enjoyed. Tell you what, assuming this new DVD means that the movie will now be available from netflix, I'll watch it. If I like it, I'll order if from amazon through your link to thank you for those great movie recommendations. (I don't buy a lot of DVDs.)

So is the quality up to Criterion standards? More expensive than typical bluray releases. As I remember, I liked the movie, but it's not in my top 50. I gather there are people who take more than five minutes to be repulsed by Andre, and that the viewer's changing reaction to Andre over the course of the movie is a big part of the attraction. That didn't work for me at all. The development of the Shawn character was more interesting. (Again, I'm going from deep memory here.)

Speaking of the last days of disco, I watched a documentary entitled "Gay Sex in the 70's" last night. It was really amazing. What an unbelievable time for everyone, but wow on teh gayz, who were going for broke in the back of meat trucks, on an abandoned pier in NYC, and just about anywhere around Christopher St. back then. 10 years later and everyone started getting the new disease, and the party came to a sad end.

While talking about Studio 54 and the rest of the big clubs at the time, one of the guys in the film notes that disco, "if it weren't for the blacks and the gays", would never have happened.

I ordered "My Dinner With Andre" DVD - a film no one in my family appreciates. The fact that I am not alone in my love for that film will comfort me, and even better, confound my family.

It reminds me that I once took a course at UCLA in existentialism. At the first session the teacher looked around the room and asked: "Why are you all here? Existentialism as a philosophy died 50 years ago." But isn't that the beauty part? It remains a living philosophy which can guide you in life, as your first commenter so well expressed it.

Read "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. The most affecting book on the subject that I have ever read.

I lived on Jane St., one block from Christopher Street from 1977 to 1981. It's not as if the world had gone mad! What a cool place to live. I loved it. The most exciting, interesting place I've ever lived.

Feel free to rent the film on Netflix. I just want you to watch it. You don't have to buy the DVD on my account. Just, if you buy it, buy it from my link if you want to give me a cut of the purchase price.

I was probably destroyed for this movie by having to watch it for a "film as lit" class in college. I had to rent it, watch it about fifteen times to get the required quotes to write my paper, and stare at the ceiling trying to figure out just what those nekkid Polack commies were doing in that forest as it seemed important. (I actually scored an A on my report, but still didn't quite "get it")

There's no way this movie works for a 19 year old Silicon Valley kid. (Although if we got to see the Polacks on camera, it may have worked better...) But I may give it another whirl.

Mrs. Bissage and I watched the Criterion release last night. We were both spellbound.

Unfortunately, houseguests arrived just as Andre started his grand surrebuttal. Crap!

Oh well. We agreed this morning we’ll watch it again later this week.

One remark, on the merits, I will hazard to make. As I’m sure you are sick of hearing, Professor, I was involved (half-assedly) in the theater back in the late-seventies/early-eighties. Well, what of it? The thing is, I watched the movie and I was astounded by how much the dialogue reminded me of actual conversations from back in the day.

“Authenticity” is not the be-all and end-all, of course, but that movie is absolutely brimming with theater-culture authenticity, at least according to my experience.

Yep. We really used to wear blindfolds and sit in a circle and listen to each other breathe and stuff like that.

THE THEATER IS ALIVE!!1!!!!!!1!!!

Ha!

WV: "hotoing." And yep, we did some of that, too, but only at cast parties.